US Politics

OrangeRKN wrote:

lex-man wrote:The problem is the NRA gets funding via gun sales in the USA so it's difficult for any anti-gun lobby to get the same kind of funding as the NRA. You can't sell anti-guns.

Basically any gun you buy will come with life time NRA membership. So even if people don't agree with the NRA and want a gun they are forced to fund them if they buy a gun.

I didn't know this, it sounds mad. So they essentially have a monopoly on gun sales? Is there a law that prevents people from selling guns without giving money to the NRA? How is that legal - isn't that essentially a tax that goes to a private group?

Cheeky Devlin wrote:Apologies if I missed this, but it seems that one of the victims of the California shooting was a survivor of the Vegas shooting last year.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-46150847

KK wrote:

Cheeky Devlin wrote:Apologies if I missed this, but it seems that one of the victims of the California shooting was a survivor of the Vegas shooting last year.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-46150847

I dread to think what the lottery-esque odds of that are.

KK wrote:

Cheeky Devlin wrote:Apologies if I missed this, but it seems that one of the victims of the California shooting was a survivor of the Vegas shooting last year.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-46150847

I dread to think what the lottery-esque odds of that are.

Preezy wrote:Is this an "I was in Vegas during the shooting" survivor, or an "I was in the crowd getting peppered with machine gun rounds" survivor?

Not that it matters, I guess, just curious.

With a population of 32,240, one's chance of becoming a victim of either violent or property crime here is one in 7. Crime rate: 153.04 (per 1,000 residents).

Quantum Name wrote:

Tafdolphin wrote:

Alvin Flummux wrote:

twitter.com/joncoopertweets/status/1060676628097961986

Mueller must indeed be ending his investigation if he's targeting the first family.

At least we now why Sessions was fired.

This isn't really happening is it?

twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1060751333723013123

(CNN) There is a growing sense of concern inside the White House over the negative reaction to Matthew Whitaker being tapped as acting attorney general after Jeff Sessions' abrupt firing.

Whitaker, who was Sessions' chief of staff, has faced criticism since Wednesday afternoon's announcement for his previous comments on special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.

Several senior officials told CNN they were surprised by the criticism, and believe it could potentially jeopardize Whitaker's chances of remaining in the post if it continues to dominate headlines.

Whitaker is expected to take over oversight of Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether Trump campaign associates colluded with Russia. He has given no indication he believes he needs to step aside from overseeing the probe, according to one person familiar with his thinking, a belief echoed by White House officials. And a source close to the President told CNN that the idea of Whitaker ending or suppressing the Russia probe is not an option as of now.

But Whitaker has previously expressed deep skepticism about the probe, including arguing in a 2017 CNN op-ed that Mueller was "dangerously close to crossing" a red line following reports that the special counsel was looking into Trump's finances and calling Mueller's appointment "ridiculous" and "a little fishy" in a 2017 appearance on the "Rose Unplugged" radio program.

Whitaker also spoke about the investigation in numerous other radio and television appearances, including CNN, where he was a legal commentator.

It was not widely known among White House staff that he'd commented repeatedly on the special counsel's investigation in interviews and on television -- which is ironic given that this is what drew President Donald Trump to him and raises continued questions over the depth of the administration's vetting process.

Sam Clovis, a 2016 Trump campaign national chairman who has close ties to Whitaker, encouraged him to get a regular commentary gig on cable television to get Trump's attention, according to friends Whitaker told at the time. Whitaker was hired as a CNN legal commentator last year for several months before leaving the role in September 2017 to head to the Justice Department.

Along with the breadth of his previous comments on the investigation, there have been questions about the legality of Whitaker's appointment.

George Conway, the husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, co-authored a New York Times op-ed published Thursday that called the appointment "unconstitutional."

The Appointments Clause of the Constitution, Article II, Section 2, Clause 2, Conway wrote, "means Mr. Trump's installation of Matthew Whitaker as acting attorney general of the United States after forcing the resignation of Jeff Sessions is unconstitutional. It's illegal. And it means that anything Mr. Whitaker does, or tries to do, in that position is invalid."

Whitaker's standing ultimately depends on the President. But continued negative coverage will get Trump's attention.

twitter.com/ddale8/status/1061003476422090753

Settlement reached in Arizona Senate vote count

Arizona Republicans and Democrats have agreed to give rural voters an extra chance to fix problems with their ballots in the count of the state’s tight Senate race.

That’s a compromise after Republicans filed a lawsuit seeking to stop urban voters from using those procedures. The settlement was announced in a Phoenix courtroom Friday afternoon.

The counties have until Nov. 14 to address the issue.

The Republican lawsuit alleged that the state’s county recorders don’t follow a uniform standard for allowing voters to address problems with their mail-in ballots, and that Maricopa and Pima counties improperly allow the fixes for up to five days after Election Day.

Democrat Kyrsten Sinema has jumped into a slight lead over Republican Martha McSally in the midst of the slow vote count.​

twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1061047090489503745

Peter Crisp wrote:Whose signatures?
It's really odd to see a leader who immediately assumes corruption at the first hint of a problem rather than calmly calling for an investigation into a possible problem.

WHY DOES ARIZONA TAKE SO LONG?

Blame the fact that Arizonans like to vote early, by mail. That sounds like a contradiction, but a mailed-in ballot requires more work for Arizona elections officials.

That’s because state law requires the envelope to be sealed and signed, and for elections officials to match each signature to the one on file with the voter’s registration before even opening the envelope. In this election, that’s about 1.7 million individual signatures that had to be confirmed, one-by-one. A total of about 2.3 million votes were cast in Arizona.

The problem comes in the final days when the ballots flood election offices. Voters can also drop off sealed mail ballots on Election Day, adding to the pile. Those ballots can’t be counted that day because the elections office is busy setting up and administering in-person voting.

The state’s Republican secretary of state, Michelle Reagan, added another reason: election security. To ensure against voter fraud, mail ballots dropped off Election Day - which totaled 320,000 - are double-checked with votes cast at the polls to confirm no one voted twice.

“Arizona takes elections seriously - from the poll workers to the county elections officials, and the Secretary of State’s office,” Reagan said in a statement Friday. “Everybody is working diligently to tabulate all of the election results in a manner that Arizonans can be proud of and, most importantly, trust the results.”

It normally takes more than a week to count all the ballots in Arizona. The recorder in the state’s biggest county - Maricopa, where 60 percent of votes are cast - Adrian Fontes, expects the counting to be done by Nov. 15.

Fontes added that another bottleneck in his office is the computer system. It dates from the 1980s and is designed for a less populated county that rarely voted by mail. So it can only process up to 75,000 ballots a day. Maricopa has about 350,000 ballots that have yet to be tallied.

Scott and Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson are now separated by just .18 percent of the votes cast. If that margin holds, the race would end up in a manual recount under Florida law.

twitter.com/dabeard/status/1060989489739259904